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      Chris Sununu Skips a New Hampshire Senate Bid, Dashing Trump’s Hopes

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      The former New Hampshire governor had been seen as a top Republican recruit in the liberal-leaning yet competitive state. President Trump had said on Sunday, “I hope he runs.”Chris Sununu, the Republican former governor of New Hampshire, announced on Tuesday that he would not run for Senate in 2026, dashing the hopes of President Trump and others in their party that he would help flip a seat in the state after a Democratic senator’s retirement.Mr. Sununu, who served for four two-year terms as governor, was once a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s — he endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary race — but the president had warmed to the possibility of luring the popular former governor into the Senate race.“I hope he runs,” Mr. Trump said on Air Force One on Sunday, noting that he had met recently with Mr. Sununu in the Oval Office. “He’s been very nice to me over the last year or so.”Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, announced her retirement last month. Representative Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, a Democrat, recently began a bid to succeed her. The other House member from the state, Representative Maggie Goodlander, has said she is also considering a run.Mr. Sununu, who has flirted with Senate campaigns for years but never actually declared a candidacy, officially pulled himself out of contention on Tuesday.”No, I’m not going to run,” he said in a radio interview on The Pulse of NH, saying it was not right for his family.He said that Republicans could still win, and that he had on Tuesday informed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, of his decision. “It doesn’t have to be me,” Mr. Sununu said.A spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Maeve Coyle, called it “ an embarrassing recruitment failure.”Another potential Republican candidate is Scott Brown, a former senator from Massachusetts, whom Ms. Shaheen needled after she announced her exit, telling Semafor: “He’s making noises. He’s not from New Hampshire.”The New Hampshire seat is one of three vacancies that Democrats must defend in 2026, along with Michigan and Minnesota. No Republican senators in competitive states have yet to announce retirements. More

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      Glenn Youngkin on D.E.I., Trump’s Tariffs and a Possible 2028 Run

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      In an interview, the Republican governor of Virginia spoke at length about his views on diversity efforts, among other subjects.Five years ago, Glenn Youngkin was a co-chief executive at a major private equity firm, where he repeatedly made the case that diversity and inclusion were good for business.Now, he is the Republican governor of Virginia, a term-limited conservative who criticizes diversity, equity and inclusion programs and is seen as a potential future candidate for president.On Sunday, he spoke by phone about his thinking on diversity, President Trump’s tariffs and whether he might be interested in running for president in 2028.Here are excerpts from the interview, edited and condensed.When you began as co-chief executive at Carlyle, you were asked by Bloomberg Markets about whether there was a need for more racial and gender diversity. And you said addressing that challenge would be one of your key priorities. Do you still believe that racial and gender diversity are important?When you are building a world-class talent pool, you have to make sure that you are looking everywhere for it. And in order to do that, you will embrace a diverse work force that is inclusive.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Glenn Youngkin, an Anti-D.E.I. Governor, Once Championed Diversity

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      Not long before he became Virginia’s governor, Mr. Youngkin helped lead, and spoke approvingly of, efforts to improve racial and gender diversity at his private equity firm.Before Glenn Youngkin was a culture warrior who cheered the demise of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, he was a financial executive who worried about a lack of diversity in his field.“One of the clear challenges in the financial sector broadly is both race and gender diversity,” Mr. Youngkin said in a 2018 interview with Bloomberg Markets, soon after becoming a co-chief executive at the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm.His company, he noted approvingly, had worked for years to address disparities in representation.“The second we stepped into this role, we emphasized that this approach was not only going to continue,” he added, “but it was going to be one of our key priorities.”Seven years later, Mr. Youngkin is the Republican governor of Virginia, an ambitious conservative who harnessed concerns about classroom instruction on race into political power, and who has energetically embraced President Trump’s hostility to D.E.I. initiatives.“D.E.I. is dead in Virginia,” he declared recently.In tone and emphasis, his transformation has been striking, and more drastic than commonly understood, according to interviews with half a dozen people who worked with Mr. Youngkin during his time leading Carlyle, as well as a review of company statements, official filings and other documentation from that time.But in many ways, the evolution of Mr. Youngkin — who some Republicans hope will run for president — reflects the ever more chameleonic nature of his party at the dawn of a second Trump era.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      El discurso de Trump sobre un tercer mandato desafía la Constitución y la democracia

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      La 22.ª Enmienda es clara: el presidente de EE. UU. tiene que renunciar a su cargo tras su segundo mandato. Pero la negativa de Trump a aceptarlo sugiere hasta dónde está dispuesto a llegar para mantenerse en el poder.Después de que el presidente Donald Trump dijera el año pasado que quería ser dictador por un día, insistió en que solo estaba bromeando. Ahora dice que podría intentar aferrarse al poder incluso cuando la Constitución estipula que debe renunciar a él, y esta vez, insiste en que no está bromeando.Puede que sí y puede que no. A Trump le gusta alborotar el avispero y sacar de quicio a los críticos. Hablar de un tercer mandato inconstitucional distrae de otras noticias y retrasa el momento en que se le considere como un presidente saliente. Sin duda, algunos en su propio bando lo consideran una broma, mientras los líderes republicanos se ríen de ello y los ayudantes de la Casa Blanca se burlan de los periodistas por tomárselo demasiado en serio.Pero el hecho de que Trump haya introducido la idea en la conversación nacional ilustra la incertidumbre sobre el futuro del sistema constitucional estadounidense, casi 250 años después de que el país obtuviera la independencia. Más que en ningún otro momento en generaciones, se cuestiona el compromiso del presidente con los límites al poder y el Estado de derecho, y sus críticos temen que el país se encamine por una senda oscura.Después de todo, Trump ya intentó una vez aferrarse al poder desafiando la Constitución, cuando trató de anular las elecciones de 2020 a pesar de haber perdido. Más tarde pidió la “rescisión” de la Constitución para volver a la Casa Blanca sin una nueva elección. Y en las 11 semanas transcurridas desde que reasumió el cargo, ha presionado los límites del poder ejecutivo más que ninguno de sus predecesores modernos.“En mi opinión, esto es la culminación de lo que ya ha empezado, que es un esfuerzo metódico por desestabilizar y socavar nuestra democracia para poder asumir un poder mucho mayor”, dijo en una entrevista el representante Daniel Goldman, demócrata por Nueva York y consejero principal durante el primer juicio político a Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House Republicans Demand Documents About ActBlue Departures

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      Republicans began investigating ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main fund-raising platform, last year in part of a broader bid to target key Democratic organizations.The leaders of three Republican-led House committees accused ActBlue, the main Democratic fund-raising platform, of complacency in fraud prevention and demanded more information about the recent resignations of a raft of top executives.“ActBlue’s internal turmoil, lack of a functioning legal team, possible retaliatory actions and failure to take fraud seriously raise a host of new questions about the platform’s ability to deter fraud and comply with legal requirements,” the chairmen of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees wrote in a four-page letter on Wednesday.The Republican chairmen specifically demanded documents related to the resignation of officials in the general counsel’s office of ActBlue, which were first reported last month by The New York Times. Republicans began investigating ActBlue last year, and the efforts are part of a broader bid to target key pieces of the Democratic political infrastructure.The committee chairmen, Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, James Comer of Kentucky and Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, also demanded testimony from two ActBlue employees whose names were redacted from a copy of the letter posted online.The letter accompanied an interim staff report that was released on Wednesday, along with nearly 500 pages of internal ActBlue documents, accusing the nonprofit of “a fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention.”Megan Hughes, a spokeswoman for ActBlue, said in a statement: “As we have historically done, ActBlue will continue to respond to requests from the House committees.”The interim report from Republicans on the Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees accused ActBlue of having “lowered its fraud-prevention standards” in 2024, pointing to, among other examples, a fraud specialist citing an annual goal that included “D.E.I. work.” While the report accused the company of opening the door to fraud, it did not contain any notable new examples but rather said the documents that it had “paint a picture of complacency.”The turmoil at ActBlue was set off in late February when two unions that represent its staff members wrote a letter to ActBlue’s board warning that the departures of the lawyers in the firm’s general counsel’s office had left the remaining employees facing legal risk for their actions.It remains unclear what instigated so many sudden departures from ActBlue. None of the officials who left the company have agreed to be interviewed on the record.But the tumult and the congressional investigation come at a perilous moment for ActBlue and the Democratic candidates and causes that rely on it to process their fund-raising. Republicans at the Capitol and in the Trump administration are vying to cripple mechanisms Democrats rely on for finances and communications.When a phone-banking system Democrats use went down briefly last weekend during the final get-out-the-vote period before Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, some Democrats fretted that it could have been sabotaged by the political right, and then worried anew about the potential of Elon Musk’s buying Democratic tech firms in order to shut them down. More

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      How a Black Progressive Transformed Into a Conservative Star

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      In the summer of 2020, Xaviaer DuRousseau was preparing to appear on a Netflix reality show called “The Circle,” where a group of strangers, isolated in separate apartments, compete for a cash prize and occasionally adopt fake digital personas to trick one another.Mr. DuRousseau, then 23, was a progressive who marched in Black Lives Matter protests, had pushed his university to require ethnic studies courses as a graduation requirement and voted for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016. For the TV show, producers wanted Mr. DuRousseau, a Black man, to pose as a white woman and lecture others about racial injustice, before revealing his true identity.Mr. DuRousseau spent hours boning up on right-wing politics to get ready for debates with conservative contestants.But as he watched videos from PragerU, the conservative advocacy group, and Candace Owens, a right-wing influencer, he found himself nodding along.Maybe, he began to think, the media really was targeting President Trump for taking on the political establishment. Maybe free college and free health care were unrealistic goals, despite what Mr. Sanders said. Maybe police brutality against Black people was less common than he thought.“I was getting so frustrated, because I kept agreeing with some of the stuff that they were saying,” he said. “I just kept debunking myself, over and over.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Susan Crawford Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Election, Despite Elon Musk’s Millions

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      Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel for a State Supreme Court seat in a race that shattered spending records and maintained a liberal majority on the court.Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate for a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, overcame $25 million in spending from Elon Musk and defeated her conservative opponent, The Associated Press reported, in a totemic contest that became a critical test of the nation’s prevailing political winds.Judge Crawford, who serves in Dane County, handily defeated Judge Brad Schimel of Waukesha County, who ran on his loyalty to President Trump and was powered by record spending in the race from Mr. Musk, the president’s billionaire policy aide. The barrage of spending in the race may nearly double the previous record for a single judicial election. With over 70 percent of the vote counted on Tuesday evening, Judge Crawford held a lead of roughly 10 points.“Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” she said in her victory speech on Tuesday night. “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”For Democrats, the result is a jolt of momentum. They have been engaged in a coast-to-coast rhetorical rending of garments since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January and embarked with Mr. Musk on an effort to drastically shrink federal agencies, set aside international alliances and alter the government’s relationships with the nation’s universities, minority groups, immigrants and corporate world.Coming on the heels of Democratic triumphs in special elections for state legislative seats in Iowa and Pennsylvania and the defeat of four Republican-backed state referendums in Louisiana, Judge Crawford’s victory puts the party on its front foot for the first time since last November. Her win showed that, at least in one instance, Mr. Musk’s seemingly endless reserves of political cash had energized more Democrats than Republicans.The victory for Judge Crawford maintains a 4-to-3 majority for liberals on the court, which in coming months is poised to deliver key decisions on abortion and labor rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Johnson Moves to Block a Bill Allowing New Parents in the House to Vote by Proxy

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      A long-simmering fight over whether to allow members of Congress to vote remotely after the birth of a new child is coming to a head on Tuesday afternoon, when Speaker Mike Johnson’s behind-the-scenes efforts to quash the majority-supported change to the chamber’s rules will be tested on the House floor.The quiet push from a bipartisan group of younger lawmakers and new parents started more than a year ago, when Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, began agitating for a change to House rules that would allow new mothers to designate a colleague to vote by proxy on their behalf for up to six weeks after giving birth. Ms. Luna landed on the idea after her own child was born.There is no maternity or paternity leave for members of Congress, who can take time away from the office without sacrificing their pay but cannot vote if they are not physically in the Capitol. Proponents of the change have called it a common-sense fix to modernize Congress, where there are more women and more younger members than there were 200 years ago.Democrats including Representatives Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, who gave birth to her second child earlier this year, and Sara Jacobs of Colorado joined Ms. Luna’s effort, expanding the resolution to include new fathers and up to 12 weeks of proxy voting during a parental leave.But Mr. Johnson has adamantly opposed them at every turn, arguing that proxy voting is unconstitutional, even though the Supreme Court refused to take up a Republican-led lawsuit challenging pandemic-era proxy voting rules in the House. Mr. Johnson and his allies have argued that any accommodation that allow members to vote without being physically at the Capitol, no matter how narrow, creates a slippery slope for more, and that it harms member collegiality.“I do believe its an existential issue for this body,” Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said on Tuesday. “Congress is defined as the ‘act of coming together and meeting.’” Changing that, she said, “undermines the fabric of that sacred act of convening.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More